Darkest Hour
by Havah Kinny
Summary: Stiles finds himself trapped, unable to see or hear anything. As he loses track of time and becomes increasingly less and less composed, he begins to fear that he will die alone, but as help arrives, Stiles has to determine whether or not his rescuer is real, or just a facet of his exhausted and scared imagination.


_**A/N: The prompt for this story was "Sensory Deprivation."**_

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"Help!" Stiles screamed out. He had no idea how long he had been in this room, but it had been too long. His voice was raw from screaming, his whole body hurt from hunger and dehydration, and worst of all, he was worn out from panic attack after panic attack. He couldn't see anything, due to the thick, scratchy cloth tied over his eyes, and he couldn't remove it with his hands cuffed tightly behind him to a ring in what felt like a cold, stone wall. The room must have been soundproofed, because for all his screaming, he hadn't been heard, and more frighteningly for him, he hadn't heard anything.

Stiles wasn't a stupid boy. He knew that this situation wasn't good, and at this point, he also knew that screaming wasn't helping. In fact, if this was one of those buried alive situations, the screaming and panicking were helping to deplete his oxygen supply much quicker than with calm, steady, even breathing…but just thinking about that, being buried alive and wasting his oxygen, forced him to panic more, and without his medication, or someone to calm him, he couldn't head off the attacks, and had to ride them out, sometimes for hours at a time.

It was the loss of sense, the loss of sight, and seemingly the loss of sound, that was making him so scared. He couldn't get any kind of handle on where he was, or what was happening to him. He had been at home, asleep in bed one moment, and the next, chained up wherever the hell he was, completely alone, with no idea where he was.

"Someone help me!" He screamed again, though the grating on his vocal chords without any water was starting to get painful, and less and less loud, less and less effective. He was hungry, he was thirsty, he felt sick and sore all over, and he was unconvinced that he would never not feel this way again. This felt an awful lot like the beginning of dying, and with everything he had become involved in over the last year, it was more than likely that he was finally in a position that he couldn't clever his way out of. "Please," he whimpered, tears starting to roll down his cheeks as hopelessness began to wash over him for what felt like the hundredth time in however long it was he had been trapped here. "Please." This time, his tone dropped to little more than a whisper, and he bowed his head, a sign of defeat that he knew had to come at some point.

"Don't cry."

Stiles raised his head instantly as a voice spoke to him, and he turned as best he could, trying to make out where the voice was coming from…or if it was even real. He knew that sometimes, when people were deprived of their senses, hallucinations and whatnot began to happen. Had he been here long enough for that to start happening?

"Who's there?" he chanced, his heart rate picking up, his breathing getting faster. There he was again, using up his oxygen supply on someone that was probably no more than a figment of his over-active imagination.

"Shh." The voice spoke again, this time a bit louder, closer. "It's me."

Stiles knew that voice, and it was because of that that he was almost certain that he must be imagining things, because how the hell would Derek Hale have found him in a place like this. Still, he began to wonder if this was really happening when he felt a series of tugs on his arms, and in seconds, his wrists were free. He tore the blindfold from his eyes, but found himself in a completely dark room, still unable to see anything.

"Hello?" he asked, twisting around, trying to figure out if there was actually anyone there.

"What did I say about being quiet?" Derek stated, pulling out his phone, using the small light to reveal himself to the boy. "Now hush, and I'll get you out of here."

Stiles couldn't believe it, and he still wondered, even as Derek lifted his broken body up, if his mind was playing tricks on him. He squeezed his eyes shut as Derek began to move, pulling him from the small cell of a room, out of the decrepit, abandoned house where the room had been, and into the woods, not stopping his rapid running until they were a good 10 miles away.

"Derek?" Stiles looked up, still in disbelief. "How…how did you find me?"

"They tried to mask your scent," Derek stated. "And they would have succeeded if it were just Scott, as a Beta, his senses aren't quite as heightened, but they didn't factor in an alpha, didn't register that the person who cared about you most wasn't Scott."

"Thank you," Stiles whispered, gripping Derek tightly, burying his head in Derek's chest.

"I'm just glad you're alright." Derek held the boy tight, applying pressure to his body, helping to make him feel safe, and derailing the panic attack building inside of Stiles. "I was worried about you."

"You were?" Stiles asked, his voice muffled by Derek's leather jacket and warm, strong chest.

"I'll always worry about you when I don't know you're safe," Derek explained. "That's a part of being in the situation that I'm in. You'll always be in danger if you're with me."

"But you'll always be there to make sure I'm okay." Stiles pulled back, looking up. "The danger, the fear, the panic, it's hard, Derek-"

"If you want out, I understand. These kinds of things shouldn't be happening to you because you run with Scott, because you're with me."

"Derek," Stiles stated. "Let me finish."

"Sorry," the werewolf mumbled.

"It's hard," he whispered. "But it's worth it."


End file.
